240 kW at the wheels. Stock internals. Daily driven.
The 86/BRZ chassis is better than its engine. Everyone who’s driven one hard knows it. Lightweight, rear-drive, mechanical LSD, low centre of gravity. The car does everything right except make enough power. After a few track days, the gap between what the chassis can handle and what the FA20 actually gives you gets hard to ignore.
This owner wanted the obvious fix: HKS turbo kit, 98 and E85 capable, reliable on stock internals, and still a daily. Drive it to work Monday, send it on track Saturday.
The HKS GTIII-RS V2
We’ve fitted a lot of these kits. The V2 sorted out the fitment and performance issues from the original, and it’s still one of the better bolt-on turbo options for the ZN6/ZC6. Turbo, tubular manifold, heat-wrapped dump pipe, front-mount intercooler, all the charge piping, hardware and gaskets. Fits without fabrication.
The GTIII-RS is sized right for the FA20. Spools fast, still flows enough up top. You could go bigger for more peak numbers, but then you’re fighting lag and losing the thing that makes the 86 fun in the first place.
Fuel system
The factory fuel system can’t keep up once you add boost, let alone E85. So the whole fuel path got upgraded: ID1050xds injectors, DeatschWerks DW300C pump, Omni Power 4 bar MAP sensor, and our Zeitronix x RZ Flex Fuel Kit with the red gauge in the cabin. The tune reads ethanol content in real time and adjusts fuel, timing, and boost targets automatically. Fill up with 98, fill up with E85, run whatever mix is in the tank. The car sorts itself out.
The ID1050xds is worth mentioning specifically because injector choice matters more than people think on a street turbo car. Cheap or oversized injectors make the car miserable to daily: rough idle, bad fuel economy, inconsistent throttle. The 1050xds meters properly across the whole range, so the car still drives like a car at part throttle.
The rest of the kit
HKS Dual Resonated Front Pipe to keep the exhaust tone civilised on the street without choking flow. HKS S-Type Oil Cooler because the FA20 runs warm even in NA form, and on track with boost, oil temps will cook without one. Colder HKS spark plugs, gapped for the application.
Tuning
The car went on our roller dyno and was tuned on 98 RON as the primary fuel, with flex fuel fully calibrated for E85. The tune was conservative where it matters. The FA20’s stock bottom end is proven at these power levels, but there’s a ceiling, and we’re not interested in finding it on a customer’s daily driver. Ringlands and rod bearings don’t care how good your tune looks on a graph.
240 kW at the wheels on 98. That’s roughly 90 kW over factory, on stock internals. Room for more on E85 whenever the owner wants it.
On the road
The GTIII-RS spools early and the power builds progressively. No lag, no sudden hit. The car feels urgent in a way the NA engine never managed. It’s predictable out of corners and easy to modulate, which is exactly what you want from a turbo setup on a light rear-drive car.
Drives to work fine. Sounds fine at cruise. Oil stays cool on track. Runs whatever fuel you put in it. That was the brief, and that’s what we delivered.
